The Stress, Cognition, and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) Laboratory at the
University of New Orleans. Visit us online! www.scanlaboratory.org.Then come visit
our booth at the Zephyrs game where you can surf through magnetic resonance
images of a real brain! - Dr. Elliott Beaton (Dr. B)
Running, thinking, eating, seeing, listening, remembering, and even your heartbeat is controlled by your brain.
Your brain is an organ that is located inside your skull and it makes you – YOU! The human brain is
especially complicated and relatively large for the size of our bodies.
Color the cortex! The wrinkly surface of the brain is called the cortex. While all the areas of the brain work
together, some areas have special jobs. The brain is often described as having four lobes. These are
shown on the right of your page. Color the four cortical lobes, the brain stem, and the cerebellum
different colors. Teachers and Parents: Some of the images here were generated using an excellent and
free brain atlas program: http://www.brainvoyager.com/products/braintutor.html
(A)
(B)
(F)
(C)
(E)
• The frontal lobe (A) helps you make plans, think about complicated things, and helps
you calm down if you feel angry, scared, or overly excited.
• The parietal lobe (B) controls movement of your body and the experience of touch,
taste, and even your temperature.
• The occipital lobe (C) is responsible for your vision and processing information about
what you see with your eyes.
• The temporal lobe (D) handles language, memory, and your hearing.
• There is more under the cortex too. You can see part of the brain stem (E) and the
cerebellum (F) (the other wrinkly bit) sticking out the bottom. The brain stem controls
your heartbeat and breathing while your cerebellum takes care of your balance and
coordination
(D)
These are digital images and three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of a real human brain! These are
collected using a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine. Each image is called a ‘slice’ – not
because we actually slice the brain but because each image is 1 to 4 millimeters (mm) thick and when we
put them together, the computer can make a 3D reconstruction of the brain that we can look at.
Let’s look at just some parts of the
brain involved in playing baseball!
Cerebellum: running, catching the ball,
throwing the ball. (1)
(3) (4)
(9)
(2)
Frontal Lobe: remembering the rules,
strategy, and planning. (2)
(5)
Motor Cortex: moving your body, running,
throwing, catching. (3)
Somatosensory Cortex: sensation of
touch when you hold the bat, ball, or mitt.
The feeling of hitting or catching the ball in
your arms and hands (4)
(7)
(1)
Side of the
brain (above)
and a ‘Sagittal’
slice (left) from
inside the
brain.
(6) (6)
Back of the brain
(above) and a
‘Coronal’ slice
(left) from inside
the brain.
Brain Stem: getting your heart pumping
and breathing when you are running
around the field. (5)
Basal Ganglia: lots of things including
control of movement, learning
procedures like how to play baseball,
eye movements and even habits! (6)
Auditory Cortex: hearing everything. (7)
(7)
Visual Cortex: seeing everything. (8)
Superior Parietal Cortex: knowing
where sounds and things are located in
relation to you. (9)
(8)
Top of the brain
(above) and a
‘Transverse’ slice
(left) from inside
the brain.
(8)